


Circle the Drain

by etcetera_kit



Category: Super Sentai Series, 宇宙戦隊キュウレンジャー | Uchu Sentai Kyuranger
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 14:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10573578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etcetera_kit/pseuds/etcetera_kit
Summary: Scorpio no longer had a home. Or a brother. He was nameless, faceless, from nowhere, fading into nothing as soon as he appeared.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written shortly after Space 8 aired. (Please note if reading this after we see more of Scorpio.) Yes, he's only been on screen 30 seconds, but I am so eager for more with him. (And Yuki Kubota is a plus for that!) Please enjoy the dark musing piece about Scorpio. 
> 
> This can also fit in with my other Kyuuranger piece, Rebellions are Built on Hope, just showing us Scorpio.

**Circle the Drain**

_I’m not going to stay and watch you circle the drain…_

When he used to dream, he dreamt of home…  


_“Aniki?”_

_“What, Stinger?” He let out a shuddering breath, blinking at the pitch darkness. Still night. Through the small gap in the tent flap, he could see the stars outside, bright spots against an inky sky. No hint of the moon setting or impending dawn, so the middle of the night. Only a fire outside with the night watch burned. He blinked again, eyes adjusting to the darkness. His little brother was sitting up in bed, huddled in the middle of his pallet. He couldn’t see because of the darkness, but he suspected that Stinger had been crying._

_“What is it?” he asked again, sitting up. He motioned for Stinger to sit closer to him. His little brother sniffed a few times, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, and then scrambled across the small space between their pallets, curling against his side._

_Stinger wrapped his arms around him, small head pressed against his chest. He wrapped one arm around his brother’s back, the other resting on his head._

_“Did you have the dream again?”_

_A furious nod that he felt rather than saw._

_He let out another long breath. He had to remind himself that his little brother was only eight years old, still a small child. Even on a desert planet where surviving meant growing up hard and fast, children were still children, and still got scared easily. Their parents had died four years, and Stinger did not remember much about them, except for the nightmares. He’d worked hard to make sure that they wouldn’t be separated, but he was almost twenty-one, the compulsory age for joining the military and going to fight Jark Matter._

_“It’s okay,” he murmured to his brother, rocking him a little. “It was just a dream. You’re okay.”_

_The closer he got to his twenty-first birthday, the more Stinger had the nightmares. And he was powerless to stop what was coming in the next few months, so he was putting precautions into place. Stinger did not like any of the plans, because he did not want his older brother to go away._

_Sadly, that was not an option._

Home…

Scorpio no longer had a home. Or a brother. He was nameless, faceless, from nowhere, fading into nothing as soon as he appeared. Those who did know his name spoke in whispers and legends. He was a living myth, a waking nightmare, the hammer that silenced the strongest of Jark Matter’s enemies.

A new enemy had risen, just as the prophecies said. The nine Kyuurangers.

The Shogun clearly believed his underlings could take care of the Kyuurangers, because he had not even suggested that he would send Scorpio to deal with them. Scorpio was only sent to dispatch the strongest of foes, or to clean up messes their own had creating, oftentimes eliminating their own. He was the hammer that allowed Jark Matter to rise and thrive. He hated himself.

The planet they currently occupied was bitterly cold, snow storms swirling at all times. Keeping ice away from the power cells was a full-time job. The lower ranks stayed in barracks with barely any heat, rotating through standing around a small fire. He had no such worries. His suite was fully heated, with down blankets and every amenity.  


So he opened the window and sat on the ledge, back pressed against the window frame and one leg swinging carelessly over the edge. He wore nothing but thin silk pajama pants and a matching robe, untied and sliding off his shoulders. The howling winds bit at this skin and the snowflakes pricked at him, slowly numbing him. Good. He liked being numb. The half-empty bottle of firewhiskey he loosely clutched helped speed up the process. Feeling anything had become his enemy. His suite was on the uppermost floor of the complex. He could jump. He would not survive the fall. But he wouldn’t, couldn’t. Because even though he would gladly have taken his own life, Jark Matter still had the thinnest leverage over him, leverage that would not let him stop the madness. 

“I know why you won’t send me against the Kyuurangers,” he said, voice sing-song, swallowed by the shrieking night. 

He took a long swallow of the firewhiskey, liquid burning down his throat. 

“You have your spies and I have mine.” Another drink. “Elidron talked too much. I knew that about him, but you still made him a retainer. Idiot!” He contemplated throwing the bottle over the ledge and hoping the glass shattered over someone’s head. No, waste of good alcohol. “I know who got a Kyuutama and became a Kyuuranger. I know who’s still looking for me. You think I can’t kill him, and you’re probably right.”

His laughter sounded like a deranged madman, even to his own ears.

“My little brother has surpassed me in every way possible, and you know what, Shogun?” He practically spit out the last word. “I hope he’s clever enough to find me before you send me to him, because I wouldn’t mind being killed by him. He has the most right to kill me.”

He took several long swallows of the firewhiskey, relishing the burn and the continuing numbness. He’d need to close the window soon, go back inside to the warmth and the down comforter and wake up tomorrow to start drinking again. The Shogun knew he was barely sober anymore, but he still managed to carry out his assignments, so the Shogun didn’t care too much about his alcohol consumption. If his assignments started to fail, then there would be a problem. Until then, he could self-medicate however much he wanted.

_The next morning dawned cool and clear. The temperatures would soar as the sun came up, but things were pleasant now. He needed to get up soon. He was on guard duty that day, responsible for patrolling the perimeter of their village, defending against anything, nature or man, that might mean them harm. He looked down. Stinger had not gone back to his own pallet last night and remained curled against his side._

_Right. Stinger had school that day._

_Elders in the village had said he was too young to take care of his younger brother. He’d been sixteen when their parents died, but he could not stand the thought of his brother going to one of the orphan encampments, not when he still had family alive who could care for him. He’d always taken on the lion’s share of raising Stinger, from the moment his little brother had been born. Their parents had wanted a large family, but ended up with just him and Stinger._

_“Aniki?”_

_So Stinger was also awake._

_Scorpio sat up, dislodging his little brother. “Time to get up,” he said, conversationally._

_He did not miss Stinger’s frown as he got up and walked to half step to the small chest that held their clothes. His little brother burrowed under the blanket._

_“You need to get ready for school,” he reminded him._

_The noise his little brother made summed up how he also felt about school. Reading books and learning about technology was all well and good, and they were both very adept at both, but learning to fight and going to hikes and being active was always preferable to sitting still._

_“School is important,” he said without any real fire._

_“Can’t I go on guard duty with you?” Stinger’s head appeared from under the blanket, hair tousled from sleep. Gods, he’d have to go put Stinger’s head under the water pump outside—which Stinger would protest—just to get his hair to lay flat so no one would gossip that Scorpio couldn’t take care of his own brother. He was more than capable of handling his brother. The village was another story._

_“No. That’s too dangerous. You’re afraid of the rats and the Southerners.”_

_Rats was a rather generous term for an extremely large and hungry rodent that would destroy an entire village in a matter of hours, less if the rat had a whole pack with them. Guards were responsible for stinging the rats and killing them. In lean times, they brought the rats back to the village for their meat. The Southerners were a group of dune scavengers that were known to take out villages if they got desperate enough. Their village had not been attacked in a long time, but that did not mean that they should let their guard down._

_Stinger still frowning._

_“Look, I’m off duty at mid-afternoon. We can go to the market after school is over. You still have the copper that Old Lady Makino gave you for helping her move those cases?”_

_His little brother nodded, looking marginally brighter about that prospect. Scorpio felt his chest tighten. There was too little time, far too little time, to spend with his brother, doing normal things. He had no idea how often he’d be able to come home once he joined the military, but he intended to send every cent of his wages back to Stinger and come home for as long and as often as was allowed._

“Scorpio-sama?”

Some underling whose name Scorpio had not bothered to learn had walked into the room. He might have been Jark Matter’s top assassin with all the amenities and privileges that came with that honor, but he was still just a glorified kept boy. Anyone could walk into his quarters at any time and issue him an order. As long as the order came from the Shogun, he had to obey the order. 

He swung his leg back into the suite lazily, being as deliberate as possible about easing off the ledge, setting his feet onto the freezing marble floor, closing the windows and taking another long pull of firewhiskey. 

“What?” he asked, voice insolent and aggressive.

“Another assignment.” The underling held a datapad out with a shaking hand.

Scorpio stalked across the room, movements still fluid and graceful, in spite of the amount of firewhiskey he’d consumed so far that evening. He snatched the datapad out of the underling’s hand and turned to set the bottle on the nearest surface he could find—which turned out to be the nightstand by the massive bed. Excellent. He planned on drinking in the bath and bed that night. 

With a few quick taps, he brought up his next target. 

Dorado Galaxy. Not the Kyuurangers. Not his brother.

Something in his chest loosened. A stay of execution. Maybe he was only drinking in the bath.

He slowly brought his gaze from the datapad to the underling. The underling was standing there awkwardly, staring at him.

“Get out!” he yelled. Luckily, the underling didn’t need to be told twice. He all but fled from the room.

He threw the datapad on the bed and raked his hands across his face and through his hair. His fingers caught on the braid with wooden beads still in his hair, the only part of his home planet he had not gotten rid of when this started. Well… not the only part. 

A large mirror was next to the door of the room, one of those highly polished wooden tables with pointless decorations under the mirror. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. His hair had been blown wildly in the wind, and he had several days worth of stubble, needing to shave. He had dark circles under his eyes and his skin was red, raw and blotchy from the cold and the whiskey. His eyes went to his abdomen, still toned and fit, to just above the waistline of his pants on the left side. 

Jark Matter had every amenity available for the top officials. Every amenity. And that included a very talented tattoo artist picked up somewhere in the Taurus Galaxy. He’d been contemplating the tattoo after Jark Matter forced him to participate and watch as his home planet, Needle, was destroyed. That was the last time he’d seen Stinger, and he knew his little brother would not understand. Even now, if he explained, there was no understanding. That bridge had been burned and obliterated. But after his spies reported that Elidron had recruited his brother and his brother was a Kyuuranger (but of course, his brother was spy and actually with Rebellion), he knew what he was doing. He had the Sasori constellation tattooed on his abdomen. Their home system, his little brother’s henshin… 

His fingers went to trace the stars in the scorpion constellation…

He grabbed the firewhiskey off the nightstand and flung the bottle as hard as he could against the mirror. The crash as the bottle cracked the mirror could not mask the animalistic cries of pain that came out of him as he collapsed to the floor.

_Scorpio smiled as Stinger intently surveyed the offerings of sweets at the table in the marketplace. Old Lady Makino gathered ingredients for these candies and sweets and made them freshly each market day. He found it a little funny that the money Stinger had to spend on sweets was from Old Lady Makino herself, but here they were._

_“Stinger,” he prompted his brother. “You need to pick so we can go get dinner and eat under the tree.”_

_His little brother finally pointed to an orange chocolate roll._

_Old Lady Makino smiled and wrapped up the roll for him in a piece of brown paper. She then reached for another roll._

_“No,” Scorpio said to stop her. “Just the one.”_

_“A gift,” she replied. She then smiled broadly at Stinger as he clutched the first roll. “Sharing’s no fun, right?”_

_Stinger glanced quickly to Scorpio and then back to Old Lady Makino. “I always share with Aniki.”_

_“I know you do,” she replied. “So that’s why I’m giving your brother a gift. So you can each have your own.” She handed the second roll to Scorpio. “Your brother takes good care of you, doesn’t he?”_

_The question was directed at Stinger, but her eyes remained on Scorpio. He tried to smile, but felt a lump in his throat. He really had to leave all of this to go fight Jark Matter. He wasn’t even sure what Jark Matter meant, just that they wanted to keep them away from their planet._

_“Thank you,” he replied softly, bowing slightly. Stinger had nodded vigorously at her question._

_“Better hurry,” she chided them gently, “Or all the meat in the stew will be gone.”_

_Scorpio thanked her again and paused to let Stinger put the rolls safely in his pack. His little brother then took his hand as they walked out of the marketplace and towards the pavilion where dinner was being served._

_They got their dinner and went to a tree near the outskirts of the village, but still well within the guard patrol. As they ate, Stinger told him about school and what they learned, including doing some work on the datapads and creating diagnostics for the various heavy equipment they used on their desert planet. He smiled at the appropriate places. The rolls were light and sweet, with hints of the chocolate and orange zest. Perfect for the end of the hot day._

_That night, as they went to bed, he didn’t even stop his brother from curling up next to him on his pallet._

_Later, before he dozed off, he realized that Old Lady Makino never asked them for payment for the first roll that she sold them. He rested a hand on his little brother’s head. How could he stop everything from changing?_

The marble floor was cold and hard against him, but he was mostly beyond feeling such pedestrian sensations as pain. 

If he hadn’t been required to join the military, he wouldn’t have gone off planet to fight Jark Matter and wouldn’t have been around intermittently as his brother grew up. With Jark Matter encroaching everywhere, they dropped the compulsory military requirement, allowing his brother to remain in their home village and defend the village from invaders. His brother grew up well, because a strong fighter in his own right. Something went right with Stinger, because a Kyuutama chose him. A Kyuutama would never choose Scorpio. He was too much of a coward, too broken, too useless. His brother was steadfast and brave. Maybe he had nothing to do with his brother becoming the inimitable warrior he was. Maybe that was all Old Lady Makino, who had taken care of Stinger when Scorpio was off planet. 

Maybe the reason a Kyuutama chose Stinger was because the universe could see nothing of Scorpio in him.

Good. That was good. Amazing. His little brother was better off without him.

His squad had been captured by Jark Matter. The weak were executed. The strong were kept in cages and made to fight each other to the death. Kill or be killed, by people once considered friends, allies, brothers or sisters. He was the last of his squad to survive, having watched everyone else be murdered or having murdered them himself. He was then brought before the Shogun, with the final survivors from other galaxies. And everything started again.

He didn’t remember when he alone was brought before the Shogun. Only one question was asked of him: what do you care most about in the universe?

For him, not what, who. His little brother.

_“I see. Lead the charge to destroy your home planet and I will spare your little brother.”_

_“You won’t spare him.”_

_“I will now. Not later. You might have to kill him later.”_

_“Then just kill me now!”_

But no one did. They broke him down until he would have begged for anyone else in the universe to take the pain away from him. Anyone. Anyone but Stinger. The only way to make the pain stop was to become the assassin that Jark Matter wanted, to become everything he fought against. He remembered the day they let him out of his cell, out of the chains, and led him to a suite not much different from this one. He couldn’t lift his arms over his head, could not get dressed without assistance. But Jark Matter had the most advanced medical technology available and he was back to normal in two days. The next day he was taken to his home planet, to witness the destruction. His brother fought hard and was left alive and he thought, maybe, just maybe, if he smiled and made Stinger believe he’d willingly gone with this, Stinger would hunt him down and be the one to kill him. 

He was a coward and weak and death was too good for him.

A large shard of the mirror was next to him as he shakily pushed himself into a sitting position. His grasped the glass, the sharp edges cutting into his fingers and palm. He slid the robe from his shoulders, the fabric pooling around him. He held out his left arm. Carefully using the glass, he made a precise incision across his forearm, watching the blood well up and run in a small rivulet down his arm. The pain had been sharp, focused. He let out a laugh. He could still feel pain. He let the shard drop to the floor and laid down on his back. 

His bloodied right hand went to clutch the tattoo on his abdomen. 

There was no reprieve for him. Just long, dark days, marching towards the inevitable when he was told to fight the Kyuurangers. 

And he could kill eight of them with no remorse.

Which is why the ninth needed to kill him first. 

He wouldn’t make it hard to do so.

_I’m beyond saving, Stinger. Just stop me._

Fin.  
8 April 2017


End file.
